For this talk-show host, it was love at first shot
01:00 AM EST on Monday, November 22, 2010
By G. Wayne Miller
Journal Staff Writer
Daria Bruno demonstrates her passion for firearms with these dozen guns from her collection that she has brought on this crisp fall morning to Smithfield Sportsmen’s Club’s outdoor range. She will fire five of them: an AK-47 rifle, an AR-15 rifle, a Mauser rifle, a Glock pistol with laser sight, and a Smith & Wesson Model 29.
“This is the ‘Dirty Harry’ gun,” she says, removing the Model 29 from its case. “The gun that every guy had to go out and buy after they saw the ‘Dirty Harry’ movie. You know, ‘You feeling lucky, punk?’ This is the gun. Eight-and-3/8th-inch barrel. Forty-four magnum.” Its polished metal and shiny wooden grip sparkle in the morning light.
No one else is shooting now, but safety procedures must still be followed. Bruno activates a warning light and buzzer and walks onto the range with an orange flag, which she plants in the ground. She positions a target with green bull’s-eyes at the 25-yard mark and returns to the firing line, where she dons glasses and protective earmuffs.
“Safety is the most important thing, and education is very important,” says Bruno, a slim, brown-haired woman who wears black jeans, shirt, sweatshirt and boots today. “If that gun goes off and it causes physical harm to you or somebody else, it can potentially change your life.”
First up is the AK-47, a semi-automatic, civilian version of the legendary Kalashnikov Automatic Rifle, which emerged from the Soviet Union in 1947 and went on to become one of the most popular assault rifles in the world. The model that Bruno owns was manufactured in Romania, one of some two dozen countries where it is made.
Bruno, 46 and a mother of two daughters, removes a magazine containing 30 rounds from an ammunition case. With the safety on and the muzzle of the unloaded gun aimed down range, she slips the magazine into the AK-47’s receiver and brings the gun to her.
“You want to get into this and really love it,” she says. “You want to take the butt of the stock here and put it into this meaty part of your shoulder. You don’t want it on your arm, you don’t want it up on your bone because it will cause some bruising.”
Bruno clicks the safety off, sights the target, and fires. The firing is loud. It creates a percussion wave that an observer feels. It produces a modest kick, pushing Bruno’s upper body back, but not violently. Bang-bang-bang, the bullets pierce a green circle 25 yards away. The smell of gunpowder fills the air. The AK-47 barrel grows warm. Happiness, the Beatles sang, was this.
Youngest child and only daughter of a Providence doctor and housewife, Bruno grew up with no intimate knowledge of guns. Her father, a World War II veteran, owned a couple of antique firearms and her brothers shot .22 rifles at summer camp, but theirs was no gun family. The young Daria had no desire to shoot or own a rifle or pistol.
After graduating from Classical High School, Bruno enrolled at Boston’s Emerson College, where she majored in mass communications. A high school internship had sparked an enduring interest in radio, and after Emerson, she became a disc jockey for a Fitchburg, Mass., station.
“Once I got on the air,” she says, “I was hooked. I loved it. It became my whole focus in life.”
Her career eventually brought her to B101 (WWBB 101.5-FM), where she was a morning staple during the 1990s. She left in 1999 and she, her two young daughters and her then-husband moved to Louisiana, where they worked in radio before buying a furniture business.
The South was not Rhode Island.
“Down there,” she says, “kids are weaned on guns. They know how to operate them, they know how to be careful with them, they’re educated about being safe and being careful. Hunting down there is like a religious experience.” Guns even permeate business, Bruno says. “Up here, you might do a deal over a golf course. Down there, you do it in a deer stand.”
One day, a friend asked her how she protected herself in her furniture store.
I don’t have a gun, she said.
The friend gave her a loaded .357 Magnum, which she put in a drawer.
“Every now and then I’d open up the drawer and I’d look in there I was kind of afraid to touch it,” she says. Eventually, she told her friend: You’ve got to take me out. You’ve got to let me fire this thing.
After a safety lesson, she did. She aimed at a tin can, and missed.
“It was just like I was a kid, and it was the Fourth of July. I completely loved it. I was hooked. I liked the action, I liked the way it felt in my hand, I liked the kick. I just thought it was the coolest thing. A .357 Magnum will rock your world!”
Soon, Bruno was buying guns of her own. With practice, her aim improved.
Returning to Rhode Island two years ago, Bruno found herself in good company. According to her friend Beverly Mouradjian, a National Rifle Association-certified instructor and co-owner (with husband George) of Glocester’s Big Bear Hunting & Fishing Supply, women’s interest in firearms is growing.
“More women are becoming more concerned with the fact of their own safety,” Mouradjian says. “Many have asked about the possibility of applying for a permit to carry a concealed firearm.” Some women also hunt, she says, motivated by love of the outdoors and by need. Game can help feed a family, she says.
Bruno hunts, too: deer and wild hogs, in Texas.
“I eat the meat,” she says. “I am not a trophy hunter.”
Perhaps inevitably, given her other passion, Bruno this year debuted what apparently is the nation’s only gun talk show hosted by a woman: Lock, Stock and Daria (also known as Stick to Your Guns Radio), which airs from 11 a.m. to noon on Saturdays on conservative station WHJJ 920-AM. Gun enthusiast Mike Wojo is also on the show.
“I’ve had no resistance at all,” Bruno says. “It’s all been very, very positive. We really stress on the show: We are not irresponsible, we are the good guys and girls of guns.”
The topic is firearms — but guns in America, in the North or in the South, are enmeshed in politics. Bruno shares her views on air.
“Americans should not be disarmed,” she says. “If the police and the military can have firearms, so should the public. I’m totally with the NRA. I’m a life member of the NRA. And I’m a firm believer in our Second Amendment right.”
The AR-15 rifle, a close cousin of the military’s M-16, has less kick than the AK-47. The Model 29 pistol is held with two hands and is more easily aimed when cocked and fired single-action. The Glock, a favorite of law enforcement, has a nasty kick but the laser sight lends it a video-game feel.
Her venerable German-designed Mauser, which she bought at auction for $700, is Bruno’s favorite gun. Equipped with a Leupold scope, the bolt-action rifle features a blued metal barrel and a custom-built walnut stock.
“It’s dead-on accurate,” Bruno says, proving it at 50 yards.
This is a rare display, however; like a prized coin or stamp, the Mauser is more to be treasured than used.
“It’s something that you don’t even want to take out because you might ruin it. It’s like a Ferrari. It’s beautiful. It’s phenomenal.”
gwmiller@projo.com
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